


someplace warm

by lynnpaper (27beansprouts)



Series: togruta, negotiator and human disaster [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Fluff, Gen, Hypothermia, Whump, and a little splash of angst, they both get a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29344974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27beansprouts/pseuds/lynnpaper
Summary: His padawan stands behind a pillar at the mouth of the cave, bundled up in her robe, wrapped tightly around her body with shivering hands. The hood is pulled up, and Anakin can see the little peaks and valley of her montrals under where the fabric is draped.Anakin can also see how she is hunched into herself, like she’s trying not to let the warmth escape through the centre of her chest — at least, that’s where her arms are crossed rigidly.He’s a little concerned about that. “You look like you’re freezing.”
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano
Series: togruta, negotiator and human disaster [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129013
Comments: 24
Kudos: 148





	someplace warm

**Author's Note:**

> ah yes the good old hypothermia trope which i've read way too much of but somehow still can't get enough of. anyway here's me stomping on ahsoka tano with fifty kilogram steel tipped boots

They’ve been stranded here for hours.

It was sheer bad luck that their ship had chosen to crash on —

“Hoth,” Anakin says in dismay. “Of all the Force-forsaken ice planets in this galaxy, we have to crash on _Hoth_.”

Now they are stuck in a cave, the warmest location possible (which is not saying much at all) while waiting for the rescue ship to arrive.

Thank the Force not all comms are down.

“Hey, Snips,” Anakin says. He’s rubbing his arms, trying to ease the chill. It’s not really working. None of them are kitted out to survive on a cold planet, much less the icy wasteland of Hoth.

His padawan stands behind a pillar at the mouth of the cave, bundled up in her robe, wrapped tightly around her body with shivering hands. The hood is pulled up, and Anakin can see the little peaks and valley of her montrals under where the fabric is draped.

Anakin can also see how she is hunched into herself, like she’s trying not to let the warmth escape through the centre of her chest — at least, that’s where her arms are crossed rigidly.

He’s a little concerned about that. “You look like you’re freezing.”

“I’m okay,” she says. She’s not, really. Her throat is dry and sore, and her chest hurts whenever she inhales the stinging, cold air, and her fingers are losing dexterity by the second, so numb they are painful. But nothing beats the bone-deep chill, the feeling that her core has turned to ice and the cold is spreading to all four limbs, snuffing out her body’s feeble attempt to thermoregulate.

Noticing Ahsoka’s shivering, Anakin frowns. “Here.” He takes off his own robe and drapes it over her. “Sit.”

Ahsoka sinks to the ground on shaky legs, resting her back against the cave wall — which, to her dismay, is covered in ice too. She sits upright again. The motion causes her to shift her arms, and a gust of cold air blows down her sleeve.

She bites her lip to suppress a curse.

“You sure you’re okay?” Anakin asks. He’s projecting concern everywhere. It’s a messily emanated aura around him.

“Yeah,” she says, grateful for the extra layer, but still adds, “You should take your robe back. You’ll need it.”

Anakin shakes his head. “I can use the Force. You stay warm. They’ll be here soon.”

She can only nod.

He’s gone the next moment, probably to check how much longer they’re stuck here. Ahsoka prays it isn’t any more than a couple hours.

* * *

“Ahsoka, they’re here. We’re leaving now.”

She hears him through a haze of cold. She’s so tired, she must have fallen asleep. Right now, standing up seems like a worse task than lifting a mountain of rocks.

“Ahsoka?” Obi-Wan says. The sound is muffled in her montrals. Ahsoka glances up to see her Grandmaster, another dizzy spell threatening to throw her vision into blackness. He’s blurry around the edges, but his Force signature is warm, and that’s all that matters right now.

There’s a hand pressed against her cheek that she almost doesn’t feel. That same hand moves to touch her neck, and she senses a spike of worry from the Jedi master in front of her.

“Can you stand?” Obi-Wan asks.

She shakes her head. A pair of arms slip under her knees and behind her back, and then Obi-Wan is carrying her, just like how Anakin does when she’s injured or sick or not in an appropriate state to use her own two legs — which happens far more often than she would like to admit.

“You’re freezing, dear one,” he murmurs. She feels more than hears the vibration of his words. “I’m going to have to get you checked out by Kix. You’re not responsive and I don’t like how pale you are.”

Ahsoka realises he’s not really talking to her to tell her anything she needs to hear, but to keep her awake. Just as well, because she would really love to just close her eyes and doze off right now.

“Hey,” Obi-Wan says, hushed against her montrals, and she realises her eyes are slipping shut. “Don’t go to sleep yet.”

“Don’t take me to the medbay,” she murmurs, but it comes out more like a pained whisper.

“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan says pleadingly.

“Don’t,” she manages to reply. “Save it for the clones.” She takes a deep breath, wincing at how the air scrapes the insides of her lungs. “Please.”

Obi-Wan’s chest tightens. Just like her master. Stupidly selfless. When do they draw the line? When they are on death’s door? She looks pretty close right now.

But Ahsoka isn’t completely unaware. She knows, and so does Obi-Wan, that she doesn’t need the advanced resources of the medcenter, and she isn’t bleeding out of an artery or breathing in a shattered rib. What she needs is to get off this planet and into a room which isn’t so cold she can’t think straight.

“Where’s Anakin?” she asks. Her voice is so soft Obi-Wan can barely hear it over the wind and snow.

“On the ship. He’s helping bring parts of the damaged shuttle back.”

She doesn’t reply, and Obi-Wan realises she’s gone limp in his arms. A finger to her pulse tells him she’s in a worse condition than he thought she was.

All Obi-Wan can think about is how upset her Master would be if he were to see her like this.

* * *

It’s a small mercy that Anakin manages to occupy himself for the entirety of the flight back to Coruscant, working with the clones to salvage what they can from the ruined craft. If only that it means he doesn’t see his padawan in the miserable state she’s in.

Obi-Wan rushes Ahsoka onboard and catches sight of Kix immediately, mercifully not working on anyone’s brutal field injuries. Noticing who he’s carrying, Kix runs forward to meet him, calling for a blanket and a medkit.

Ahsoka isn’t unconscious, but she may as well be for how much she can do at the moment. Her brain feels _fuzzy_ , and lethargic, like she’s been sedated. And then there’s the cold, no longer strangling her and constricting her throat but deeming her body devoid of sensation, even now that she’s on a warm ship.

 _She’s not shivering_ , she hears. Another voice, a clone, asks _how long?_ The first voice says _I don’t know_ , and it’s slightly panicked, but she feels so calm, and the arms holding her are strong and steady and most importantly _warm_.

There seem to be enough brain cells left in her head to identify the voices, even if it takes longer than it normally would.

 _Will she be alright outside the medbay?_ Obi-Wan asks. 

_So he listened_ , she thinks belatedly, and smiles faintly even though it stings her chapped lips.

How nice it would be to give in to the cold, sink under as her grasp slips on the ice, let herself float into an infinite oblivion.

Delusional, that’s what she is.

Through a haze, she hears a very worried Master Kenobi ask an equally worried Kix _what’s the normal body temperature for a togruta?_ and something about _you’ll have to make do with a blanket and body heat for now_ before she gives in to the tiredness and closes her eyes.

* * *

She doesn’t know how long it’s been, but she can feel a warm liquid seeping into her veins from a point in her hand. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s unfamiliar, and she squirms as the heat circulates, easing away the painful chill.

She isn’t awake, exactly, but fragments of sound still manage to creep into her montrals.

_What’s that?_

A voice. Obi-Wan.

She wonders why he’s still here. Surely there are things he must attend to on this ship other than a fifteen year old togruta whose body temperature is dangerously low.

 _Warmed IV fluids,_ says a clone.

She can feel her fingers now, and an uncomfortable burn is beginning to spread into her hands and feet.

Fatigue slips in again, and the voices fade.

* * *

Anakin has been running around the temple for at least thirty minutes, and he can’t find Ahsoka or Obi-Wan — not in the hangar, not in the corridors, not in the cafeteria. He checks the ship they returned in, asks the clones. Nothing. He knows they came back with him, and he knows they’re tired from the cold and are most likely resting, but it’s not like them to go their separate ways immediately after a mission.

The trip back to Coruscant had been a nonstop onslaught of trying to save what they could from the wreckage, not including the ruined alloy panels and the punctured fuel tank. The work had distracted him, admittedly. Any mechanical work would have.

But it had distracted him from checking on Ahsoka and, subsequently, Obi-Wan. The last he’d seen of Ahsoka was a curled up little figure, bundled in robes yet shivering to Sith hells. Looking back, he wishes he’d stayed with her. She must have been freezing, especially with so little body to her.

Usually, Ahsoka would be hanging around the ships in the hangar, chatting with clones or repairing whatever she could get her hands on. Now he can’t find her anywhere, and the clones he’s asked haven’t seen her either.

Likewise, Obi-Wan would be debriefing his battalion, the same way Anakin should be doing right now — and he would, if he wasn’t so worried about his former master and current padawan.

So it’s safe to say he’s relieved when he keys in a familiar code to a familiar door and finally sees them huddled together on a couch in Obi-Wan’s quarters, even if that relief is accompanied by a wave of panic.

Obi-Wan has Ahsoka lying in his lap, one arm across her shoulders to keep her from rolling off. She’s still bundled in her cloak, but someone’s added a medical-issue blanket to the layers covering her shivering form, and her hood is off, Obi-Wan gently stroking her montrals and murmuring words of comfort. She doesn’t look like she’s awake, but her lips and skin are horrendously pale.

“Ahsoka?” Anakin asks, hurrying to her. He knew she was cold but this was bad. The conditions she was in, with no doubt, had been a perfect recipe for an onset of hypothermia. Which is exactly what it looks like she’s suffering from now.

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan looks up as he comes in, face drawn.

“She was fine,” Anakin says, clearly distressed, fingers running through his hair in agitation. “I thought she was fine.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says slowly. “Togrutas run warm.”

Dread creeps in through the unclosed edges of his mind, dark and oily. _Togrutas run warm_. He’d been freezing on that kriffing ice planet. How the hell would a togruta, a child no less, have fared any better?

He doesn’t realise he’s gone silent until Obi-Wan tentatively asks, “Anakin?”

“Why isn’t she in the medbay?” he snaps, suddenly blinded by a surge of protectiveness for his padawan.

An apologetic, almost pitiful noise is all he gets in response. “She refused.” _Just as you would have_ , Obi-Wan doesn’t add.

It looks as if Anakin is dealing with three different headaches simultaneously as he shuts his eyes tight, pinching the bridge of his nose. Probably because he’s realised his adamant stubbornness and thick head have almost certainly been passed on to his padawan.

“Did you force her?” Anakin asks.

Obi-Wan frowns, and his hand stills on Ahsoka’s montrals. “Force her into the medbay? No. You should have seen the state she was in.”

Another wave of guilt threatens to break, but Anakin tamps down on it, calming the raging emotional storm in his chest. He hadn’t seen the worst of her hypothermia, and he doesn’t know whether to be relieved or worried about that.

Ahsoka scrunches up her forehead, making a small sound of protest, and Obi-Wan resumes his idle stroking. She quiets again.

 _Not asleep, then,_ Anakin thinks. Which means she also heard her master say _Did you force her?_ Which was a very brusque notion, yes, but valid nonetheless. He hopes she at least understands that. 

“Kix said she would be alright. She just needs to keep warm,” Obi-Wan says.

That brings some reassurance. Anakin trusts Kix, literally, with his life, and he knows Kix would give only the best care to the clones’ favourite commander.

Anakin exhales. “Okay.” Obi-Wan nods, and shifts Ahsoka onto her other side so she’s facing him. She hums lightly at that.

It’s a silent battle in Anakin’s mind whether he really wants the answer to his next question.

“How was she when you found her.” He says it flatly, more like a statement than an enquiry.

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath and exhales, as slowly as he can.

 _You’re not going to like this_ , he projects across the bond.

 _Show me_ , Anakin responds.

So he does.

They come first in tableaus and short snippets — Ahsoka against the wall of the cave where he left her, curled up and shivering, the way Obi-Wan found her. Ahsoka with half-closed eyelids, icicles on her eyelashes and a blue tinge to her lips. Ahsoka slack in Obi-Wan’s arms, unprotesting even as he carries her through crowded corridors.

The snippets turn into slices of sound and movement — Ahsoka, now covered in another layer, no longer shivering. _A bad sign_. Kix saying _she has hypothermia_ and a voice replying _how bad?_ The corridors to a general’s quarters, a code hastily keyed in, a togruta beginning to shiver again, speech slurred and drowsy.

It’s shocking, but not as much as he expected. Maybe because he had prepared himself for the worse, or because he was selfish and automatically compared the damage to the worst injuries he’s ever seen, thus making hypothermia seem trivial in his mental cache of amputated limbs and lightsaber burns.

 _Both_ , he thinks bitterly.

That bitterness dissipates the second he hears her voice.

“Master?” Ahsoka mumbles. She cracks open both eyes, but it’s an effort not to close them right away.

“Hey, Snips,” Anakin says softly, kneeling by the couch, and reaches out to touch her cheek. She makes a noise of assent at the contact, leaning into his palm.

“You were talking really loud,” she says, eyes closed again.

“My apologies, Padawan,” Anakin replies. _Back to their banter._

But the tiredness doesn’t ease from Anakin’s smile. Neither does the bow of his shoulders straighten out, and the clench of his jaw loosen up.

Anakin nods at Obi-Wan, who looks at Ahsoka one last time, understanding, and gently sets her head down on the cushions, sliding his legs out from under her so Anakin can take his place.

Once she’s lying in his lap, it feels only natural for Anakin to run a hand over her montrals, the same way he has since the first time she spent the night beside him after a nightmare. Ahsoka sighs softly, relaxing into his touch.

He can’t shake the overwhelming guilt which crushes his heart in an iron fist. His own padawan, yet he had no idea of her body’s biology, hadn’t taken the time to learn. He thinks back to every time Ahsoka has gotten injured or unwell, and how he promised every time to protect her as best he could, and told her every time that he would give everything to keep her safe.

Yet here he is. An easily avoidable circumstance, if only he’d taken a moment to think for a second how she was doing.

Ahsoka rolls onto her back, her back lek pressing into his lap, and those bright blue eyes meet his with a tired smile. He meets it with one of his own.

“Hot drink, Ahsoka?” Obi-Wan asks from where he’s standing by the counter.

“Caf,” she says, not breaking eye contact with Anakin, who grins knowingly.

“Caf will stunt your growth!” Obi-Wan yells.

Anakin laughs out loud, the bleak situation temporarily forgotten. “No it won’t. I’m taller than you,” he says.

“You’re a bad influence, that’s what you are,” Obi-Wan replies, and sets about making that cup of caf.

* * *

“Teach me.”

Anakin glances up at Ahsoka from where he’s fiddling with his mechno hand. “Sorry?”

“Teach me how to use the Force. To regulate.”

Well. This was to be expected.

Anakin sighs. “Ahsoka, it’s not natural. I don’t want you purposely putting yourself in dangerous conditions just because you think you can force your body to adjust.”

“But _you_ did it!” She’s frustrated, Anakin can tell. Both by the tone of her voice and the crease of her forehead.

Anakin shakes his head.

Ahsoka’s mouth is set firm. “As your padawan, I’m asking to _learn_.”

“And as your master, I’m declining for your own safety, and because I cannot trust that you won’t abuse your abilities and damage your health as a consequence.”

“Master!”

“Yes, Padawan?”

She’s scowling at him, and if it were any other day he would admonish her on her belligerence and send her to her room. But she’s just recovered from _severe_ hypothermia, and he can sympathise with her wanting to learn. Especially when she says “If you teach me, this won’t have to happen again.”

“This was my fault, Ahsoka,” Anakin sighs. “It should not have happened and it will not happen again. I should never have left you in the cold like that, and I should have been more aware of _your_ personal circumstances.”

“And I should have known what to do in that situation!” she almost yells. Immediately, she starts to cough, her throat still not yet recovered from the abrasive chill of the air it had been subjected to. Anakin is by her side in an instant, offering a glass of water, a hand rubbing her back in soothing circles as he eases her onto the couch.

Anakin so badly wants to berate her, find a way to justify his choice in the matter — but she looks so pitiful, hacking away and clearly in discomfort, that all he can do is curl his arms tightly around her as her coughs rattle against his chest.

“Hey,” he says gently, when she’s calmed down. Ahsoka just burrows deeper into his arms, curling her hands in his tunic.

“What if Master Kenobi hadn’t thought to look for me?” she asks.

Anakin refuses to entertain the thought. She wouldn’t have made it, without a doubt.

“Master Kenobi did look for you. There’s no point thinking about what _could_ have happened when it’s all done and in the past,” he says.

Anakin places a hand on her neck. She’s still a little cool.

“But you’ll teach me someday?” she asks hopefully.

“Of course,” Anakin replies. “Not today, though. Or tomorrow. Only when you’re ready.”

 _I’m ready_ , she sends across their bond.

 _Nice try_ , Anakin shoots back, grinning, and affectionately rubs her montrals. He still feels bad about leaving her in the cold, but as he said himself — _there’s no point thinking about what could have happened_. So he holds her tight, savouring every moment he gets to spend with his padawan. Force knows when they’ll have another.

Ahsoka melts into his touch, the chill finally gone. Wherever they get sent for their next mission, she hopes it’s someplace warm.

**Author's Note:**

> and then they all went to jakku or something 
> 
> thanks for reading!! do send feedback or prompts in the comments or on tumblr as [lynnpaper](https://lynnpaper.tumblr.com/)! i'll cry about this lineage with anyone who wants to cry with me


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